Composite materials, such as composite panels, are used in a variety of applications. In one application, composite panels are used for various structures of a vehicle, such as an aircraft. Desirably, composite panels have a high bending stiffness and resistance to shear forces. However, traditional non-sandwich composite panels fail to provide acceptable levels of both bending stiffness and resistance to shear forces without unduly increasing the weight and thickness of the panels. For example, conventional composite panels optimized for bending stiffness may not be fully utilizing the capability of all the layers within the composite panel, which results in a heavy panel. However, high bending stiffness in composite panels has been achieved by adding a high-shear capable, low-density core layer made from a different material or differently configured material to create a lightweight sandwich composite panel with high bending stiffness. Despite the advantages of sandwich composite panel designs, the addition of the extra core layer results in increased cost and complexity compared to non-sandwich composite panel designs.